Summary and 3 learnings - Essay Example

Cyber-weapon The American intelligence agencies have closely watched over the adversaries of United They have obtained a cyberweapon which has been developed by an attack group called the Equation group. The group has given American intelligence agencies the power to permanently sabotage tools and embed surveillance in networks and computers of their adversaries such as the Russia, China, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran (Perlroth and Sanger)In their article, Perlroth and Sanger say that Equation Group has the same techniques used in Stuxnet, a computer worm created by Israel that can disable centrifuges in a nuclear enrichment program.

Israel and United States have worked jointly to advance Stuxnet in to an extent that it can infect computers. The U.S has developed implants out of Stuxnet that infect the “firmware”; an embedded software preparing a computer’s hardware before its operating system starts. The implants are beyond the reach of most security controls and existing antivirus products, making it virtually impossible to stop it.Equation Group has been active for approximately two decades. It uses techniques of cyber attacks that surpass anything known to be sophisticated and complex in the virtual environment of networks and computers.

The group has managed to perform firmware attacks, giving it the power to control almost anything concerning nuclear enrichment plants of U.S adversaries (Perlroth and Sanger).Learnings from the articleThere are three issues which I have learnt from the articles. The first one is that American government Agencies do not use security software products made by Kaspersky Lab. This is because the lab was founded by a person who once served the Russian military, which is closely watched by the American agencies.

The second one is that it is difficult to perform a cyber attack on computers with an “air gap system”; a system that separates computers from the outside world and is mostly used by U.S adversaries. The last issue learnt from the article is that the U.S Equation Group has made an effort of mapping out the so- called air-gapped system.Work CitedPerlroth, Nicole and Sanger, David E. U.S. Embedded Spyware Overseas, Report Claims. The New York Times, 16 Feb. 2015. Web. 17 Feb 2015.